A Waiting Pyre
by ncfan
Summary: There is blood on my hands. Or is that the paint? /Spoilers./


This contains spoilers both for Ep. 2 and Ep. 7. Beware.

I own nothing.

* * *

There is blood on my hands.

Or is that the paint?

Is it the paint that's splattered across my hands and sleeve cuffs? Is it the paint I made such gruesome handprints on the door with? I couldn't even manage to draw a proper magic circle on the door, that's how pathetic I've gotten. All I could do was claw and scratch and moan.

It must be both. I have blood on my hands, and there's paint here too.

There are bodies in the room with me, leaking twin seas of blood all out onto the floor—Madam would be so angry if I'd not killed her too. One belongs to a man I didn't much care for. The other belongs to a man I love, or thought I did. I really don't know anymore. I don't know about anything. I really don't.

I loved George-san, you understand. He wasn't the only one, but he was the only one I ever entertained even the most wildly fanciful dreams of having a future with. Even though I knew that it could never happen, I still walked down that path. I led him on. I deceived him. I made promises to him that I could not keep and had no right to make.

He found me out.

In a strained moment, in a moment when the truth was very soon to come out anyways, I told him everything. I told him the truth of me, and all my faces, and everything I had done today and last night, entertaining the wild thoughts that perhaps he'd forgive me if I told him. He didn't. George-san stared at me in disbelief and growing horror, and I swear I thought I saw disgust on his face, but mostly he was just afraid. Afraid of little old me, as he should have been. I am a monster, you see. My body is broken and mangled. I have blood on my hands. Some of that blood is his parents'. Of course he wouldn't forgive me. I couldn't even have words of love from his lips as I sent him on into the next life. I killed him, and his eyes are still looking at me from across the room.

They're empty, like little glass orbs. No life in them; he's like a stuffed doll or a miracle of modern taxidermy. And all his stuffing's spilling out…

Just like the ones I stuffed sweets into the stomachs of. Just like Jessica, and I couldn't even look her in the eye when I did it.

And now, at last, it's over. That's it; it's over. I can't take any more. I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend to be a Witch or kill people for Kinzo's stupid epitaph, pretending to make it about sacrifices and a resurrection ceremony. I know the truth. I'm not a Witch. I'm not a human. I'm not even furniture. I don't what I am. Whatever I am, it must be even less than furniture. Because that hideous face I see in Natsuhi's mirror doesn't even remotely resemble the face that Shannon, servant of the Ushiromiya family, puts to the world.

I can't help but look at myself. There I am, puffy-eyed and red-faced, scarlet at my nostrils, my cheeks, my eyeballs. My hair sticks to my wet cheeks. My bitten lips quiver madly. It's just the same as always: a pathetic, hideous, inhuman face. Some would think it pretty (George thought it was pretty, but he's not here anymore, I made sure of that, I did, I did, and how could I show any more of a miserable face to him than I had already), but it's not. It's really, really not. My face matches my body, after all, a sick, twisted, mangled thing unable to love or give love. A human could be pretty. A Witch could be pretty. Even furniture could be passable, but I am none of these things anymore.

A monster can't be pretty. A blood-splattered, Hell-bound monster can't be pretty. She can only be a ravening beast, devouring all in her own despair and self-pity, devouring others in a vain attempt to give herself some sense of purpose at the end. In the Golden Land, perhaps I'll be human, but never here, never here.

The mirror, it'll break soon. I'm glad. I don't like mirrors. And my body will break soon too, so it will match my heart and my mind. The ravaging storm to come will be my pyre.

Any time now.

Any time.


End file.
